Torment (6 page)

Luce bit her lip. They’d reached the top of the stairs and were standing in a crowd of students on the deck. Everyone else was starting to amble through the sliding glass doors. “What do you mean, ‘swayed’?”

“They’re both fallen, of course, but have picked different sides. She’s an angel, and he’s more of a demon.” Dawn spoke nonchalantly, as if she were talking about the difference between frozen yogurt flavors. Seeing Luce’s eyes bulge, she added, “It’s not like they can get married or anything—though that would be the hottest wedding ever. They just sort of … live in sin.”

“A demon is teaching our humanities class?” Luce asked. “And that’s okay?”

Dawn and Jasmine looked at each other and chuckled. “
Very
okay,” Dawn said. “You’ll come around to Steven. Come on, we gotta go.”

Following the flow of other kids, Luce entered the classroom. It was broad and had three shallow risers, with desks on them, that led down to a couple of long tables. Most of the light came in through skylights. The natural lighting and high ceilings made the room seem even bigger than it was. An ocean breeze blew in through the open doors and kept the air comfortable and fresh. It could not have been more different from Sword & Cross. Luce thought she could almost have liked Shoreline, if it hadn’t been for the fact that her whole reason for being here—the most important person in her life—was missing. She wondered if Daniel was thinking about her. Did he miss her the way she missed him?

Luce chose a desk close to the windows, between Jasmine and a cute boy-next-door kind of guy who was wearing cutoffs, a Dodgers cap, and a navy sweatshirt. A few girls stood clustered near the door to the bathroom. One of them had curly hair and boxy purple glasses. When Luce saw the girl’s profile, she nearly bolted from her seat.

Penn
.

But when the girl turned toward Luce, her face was a little squarer and her clothes were a little tighter and her laugh was a little louder and Luce almost felt like her heart was wilting. Of course it wasn’t Penn. It never would be, ever again.

Luce could feel the other kids glancing at her—some of them outright stared. The only one who didn’t was Shelby, who gave Luce an acknowledging nod.

It wasn’t a huge class, just twenty desks arranged on the risers, facing the two long mahogany tables at the front. There were two dry-erase white boards behind the tables. Two bookshelves on either side. Two trash cans. Two desk lamps. Two laptops, one on each table. And the two teachers, Steven and Francesca, huddled near the front of the room, whispering.

In a move Luce wasn’t expecting, they turned and stared at her too, then glided to the tables. Francesca sat on top of one, with one leg tucked beneath her and one of her high heels skimming the wood floor. Steven leaned against the other table, opened a heavy maroon leather portfolio, and rested his pen between his lips. For an older man, he was good-looking, sure, but Luce almost wished he weren’t. He reminded her of Cam, and of how deceptive a demon’s charm could be.

She waited for the rest of the class to take out textbooks she didn’t have, to plunge into some reading assignment she’d be behind on, so she could surrender to feeling overwhelmed and just daydream about Daniel.

But none of that happened. And most of the kids were still sneaking glances at her.

“By now you must all have noticed that we’re welcoming a new student.” Francesca’s voice was low and honey-thick, like a jazz singer’s.

Steven smiled, showing a flash of brilliant white teeth. “Tell us, Luce, how are you liking Shoreline so far?”

The color drained from Luce’s face as the other students’ desks made scraping sounds on the floor. They were actually turning in their seats to focus on her.

She could feel her heart race and her palms grow damp. She shrank in her seat, wishing she were just a normal kid at a normal school back home in normal Thunderbolt, Georgia. At times over the past few days, she’d wished she’d never seen a shadow, never gotten into the kind of trouble that left her dear friends dead, or got her involved with Cam, or made it impossible for Daniel to be near her. But there was where her anxious, tumbling mind always came to a full stop: How to be normal and still have Daniel? Who was so very far from normal. It was impossible. So here she was, sucking it up.

“I guess I’m still getting used to Shoreline.” Her voice wobbled, betraying her, echoing off the sloped ceiling. “But it seems all right so far.”

Steven laughed. “Well, Francesca and I thought to help you get used to it, we’d change gears from our usual Tuesday-morning student presentations—”

From across the room, Shelby hooted, “Yes!” and Luce noticed that she had a stack of notecards on her desk and a big poster at her feet that read
APPARITIONS AIN’T SO BAD
. So Luce had just gotten her out of a presentation. That had to be worth something in roommate points.

“What Steven means,” Francesca chimed in, “is that we’re going to play a game, as an icebreaker.” She slid down from her table and walked around the room, heels clicking as she distributed a sheet of paper to each student.

Luce expected the chorus of groans that those words usually evoked from a classroom of teens. But these kids all seemed so agreeable and well-adjusted. They were actually just going to go with the flow.

When she laid the sheet on Luce’s desk, Francesca said, “This should give you an idea of who some of your classmates are, and what goals we work toward in this class.”

Luce looked down at the paper. Lines had been drawn on the page, dividing it into twenty boxes. Each box contained a phrase. It was a game she’d played before, once at summer camp in western Georgia as a little kid, and again a couple of times in her classes at Dover. The object was to go around the room and match a different student with each phrase. Mostly, she was relieved; there were definitely more embarrassing icebreakers out there. But when she looked more closely at the phrases—expecting normal things like “Has a pet turtle” or “Wants to go skydiving someday”—she was a little unnerved to see things like “Speaks more than eighteen languages” and “Has visited the outerworld.”

It was about to be painfully obvious that Luce was the only non-Nephilim in the class. She thought back to the nervous waiter who had brought her and Shelby their breakfast. Maybe Luce would be more comfortable among the scholarship kids. Beaker Brady didn’t even know he’d dodged a bullet.

“If no one has questions,” Steven said from the front of the room, “you’re welcome to begin.”

“Go outside, enjoy yourselves,” Francesca added. “Take all the time you need.”

Luce followed the rest of the students onto the deck. As they walked toward the railing, Jasmine leaned over Luce’s shoulder, pointing a green-lacquered fingernail at one of the boxes. “I have a relative who’s a full-blooded cherub,” she said. “Crazy old Uncle Carlos.”

Luce nodded, like she knew what that meant, and jotted in Jasmine’s name.

“Ooh, and I can levitate,” Dawn chirped, pointing to the top left corner of Luce’s page. “Not, like, a hundred percent of the time, but usually after I’ve had my coffee.”

“Wow.” Luce tried not to stare—it didn’t seem like Dawn was making a joke. She could
levitate?

Trying not to show that she was feeling more and more inadequate, Luce searched the page for something, anything she knew anything about.

Has experience summoning the Announcers
.

The shadows. Daniel had told her the proper name for them that last night at Sword & Cross. Though she’d never actually “summoned” them—they’d always just shown up—Luce did have some experience.

“You can write me in there.” She pointed to the bottom left corner of the paper. Both Jasmine and Dawn looked up at her, a little awed but not disbelieving, before moving on to fill in the rest of their sheets. Luce’s heart slowed down a little. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad.

In the next few minutes she met Lilith, a prim redhead who was one of three Nephilim triplets (“You can tell us apart by our vestigial tails,” she explained. “Mine’s curly”); Oliver, a deep-voiced, squat boy who had visited the outerworld on summer vacation last year (“So totally overrated I can’t even begin to tell you”); and Jack, who felt like he was on the cusp of being able to read minds and thought it would be all right if Luce wrote him down for that. (“I sense that you’re okay with that, am I right?” He made a gun out of his fingers and clicked his tongue.) She had three boxes left when Shelby tugged the paper out of her hands.

“I can do both of these,” she said, pointing at two of the boxes. “Which one do you want me for?”

Speaks more than eighteen languages
or
Has glimpsed a past life
.

“Wait a minute,” Luce whispered. “You’ve … you can glimpse past lives?”

Shelby waggled her eyebrows at Luce and dashed her signature into the box, adding her name in the “eighteen languages” box for good measure. Luce stared at the paper, thinking about all her own past lives and how frustratingly off-limits they were to her. She had underestimated Shelby.

But her roommate was already gone. Standing in Shelby’s place was the boy she’d sat next to inside the classroom. He was a good half foot taller than Luce, with a bright, friendly smile, a splash of freckles on his nose, and clear blue eyes. Something about him, even the way he was chewing on his pen, looked … sturdy. Luce realized this was a strange word to describe someone she’d never spoken to, but she couldn’t help it.

“Oh, thank God.” He laughed, smacking his forehead. “The one thing I can do is the one thing you have left.”

“ ‘Can reflect a mirror image of self or others’?” Luce read slowly.

He tossed his head from side to side and wrote his name in the box. Miles Fisher. “Real impressive to someone like you, I’m sure.”

“Um. Yeah.” Luce turned away. Someone like her, who didn’t even know what that meant.

“Wait, hey, where are you going?” He tugged her sleeve. “Uh-oh. You didn’t catch the self-effacing joke?” When she shook her head, Miles’s face fell. “I just meant, compared to everyone else in the class, I’m barely hanging on. The only person I’ve ever been able to reflect other than myself was my mom. Freaked my dad out for about ten seconds, but then it faded.”

“Wait.” Luce blinked at Miles. “You made a mirror image of your mother?”

“By accident. They say it’s easy to do with the people you, like, love.” He blushed, the faintest rosy pink across his cheekbones. “Now you’re going to think I’m some kind of mama’s boy. I just mean ‘easy’ is about where my powers end. Whereas you—you’re the famous Lucinda Price.” He waved his hands in a very masculine version of spirit fingers.

“I wish everyone would stop saying that,” she snapped. Then, feeling rude, she sighed and leaned against the deck’s railing to look out at the water. It was just so hard to process all these hints that other people here knew more about her than she knew about herself. She didn’t mean to take it out on this guy. “I’m sorry, it’s just, I thought I was the only one barely hanging on. What’s your story?”

“Oh, I’m what they call ‘diluted,’ ” he said, making exaggerated air quotes. “Mom has angel in her blood a few generations back, but all my other relatives are mortal. My powers are embarrassingly low-grade. But I’m here because my parents endowed the school with, um, this deck you’re standing on.”

“Whoa.”

“It’s really not impressive. My family’s obsessed with me being at Shoreline. You should hear the pressure I get at home to date a ‘nice Nephilim girl for once.’ ” Luce laughed—one of the first real laughs she’d had in days. Miles rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “So, I saw you having breakfast with Shelby this morning. She your roommate?”

Luce nodded. “Speaking of nice Nephilim girls,” she joked.

“Well, I know she’s kind of, um …” Miles hissed and made a clawing motion with one hand, causing Luce to crack up again. “Anyway, I’m not the star student here or anything, but I’ve been around a while, and half the time I still think this place is pretty crazy. So if you ever want to have a very normal breakfast or something—”

Luce found herself bobbing her head.
Normal
. Music to her mortal ears.

“Like … tomorrow?” Miles asked.

“That sounds great.”

Miles grinned and waved goodbye, and Luce realized that all the other students had already gone back inside. Alone for the first time all morning, she looked down at the sheet of paper in her hand, unsure how to feel about the other kids at Shoreline. She missed Daniel, who could have decoded a lot of this for her if only he hadn’t been—where
was
he, anyway? She didn’t even know.

Too far away.

She pressed a finger to her lips, remembering his last kiss. The incredible embrace of his wings. She felt so cold without him, even in the California sunshine. But she was here because of him, accepted into this class of angels or whatever they were—complete with her bizarre new reputation—all thanks to him. In a weird way, it felt good to be connected to Daniel so inextricably.

Until he came for her, it was all she had to hold on to.

THREE

SIXTEEN DAYS

“O
kay, hit me, what’s the weirdest thing about Shoreline so far?”

It was Wednesday morning before class, and Luce was seated at a sunny breakfast table on the terrace, sharing a pot of tea with Miles. He was wearing a vintage yellow T-shirt with a Sunkist logo on it, a baseball cap pulled down just above his blue eyes, flip-flops, and frayed jeans. Feeling inspired by the very relaxed dress code at Shoreline, Luce had swapped out her standard black getup. She was wearing a red sundress with a short white cardigan, which felt kind of like the first day of sunshine after a long stretch of rain.

She dropped a spoonful of sugar into her cup and laughed. “I don’t even know where to start. Maybe my roommate, who I think snuck in just before sunrise this morning and was gone again before I woke up. No, wait, it’s taking a class taught by a demon-and-angel couple. Or”—she swallowed—“the way kids here look at me like I’m some legendary freak. Anonymous freak, I got used to. But notorious freak—”

“You are
not
notorious.” Miles took a giant bite of his croissant. “I’m gonna tackle those one at a time,” he said, chewing.

As he dabbed the side of his mouth with his napkin, Luce half-marveled, half-chuckled at his occasionally impeccable table manners. She couldn’t help picturing him taking some fancy etiquette course at the golf club as a boy.

“Shelby’s rough around the edges,” Miles said, “but she can be cool, too. When she feels like it. Not like I’ve ever witnessed that side of her.” He laughed. “But that’s the rumor. And the Frankie/Steven thing weirded me out at first, too, but somehow they make it work. It’s like a celestial balancing act. For some reason having both sides present gives students here the most freedom to develop.”

There was that word again.
Develop
. She remembered that Daniel had used it when he first told her he wouldn’t be joining her at Shoreline. But develop into what? It could only apply to the kids who were Nephilim. Not Luce, who was the lone full human in her class of almost-angels, waiting until
her
angel felt like swooping back in to save her.

“Luce,” Miles said, interrupting her thoughts. “The reason people stare at you is because everyone’s heard about you and Daniel, but no one knows the real story.”

“So instead of just asking me—”

“What? Whether you two really do it on the clouds? Or whether his rampant, ya know, ‘glory’ ever overwhelms your mortal”—he stopped, catching the horrified look on Luce’s face, then gulped. “Sorry. I mean, you’re right, they let it blow up into some big myth. Everyone else, that is. I try not to, um, speculate.” Miles put down his tea and stared at his napkin. “Maybe it feels too personal to ask about.”

Miles shifted his gaze and was now staring at her, but it didn’t make Luce feel nervous. Instead, his clear blue eyes and slightly lopsided smile felt like an open door, an invitation to talk about some of the things she hadn’t been able to tell anyone yet. As much as it sucked, Luce understood why Daniel and Mr. Cole had forbidden her to reach out to Callie or her parents. But Daniel and Mr. Cole were the ones who had enrolled her at Shoreline. They were the ones who’d said she’d be okay here. So she couldn’t see any reason to keep her story a secret from someone like Miles. Especially since he already knew
some
version of the truth.

“It’s a long story,” she said. “Literally. And I still don’t know all of it. But basically, Daniel is an important angel. I guess he was kind of a big deal before the Fall.” She swallowed, not wanting to meet Miles’s eyes. She felt nervous. “At least, he was until he fell in love with me.”

It all began to pour out of her. Everything from her first day at Sword & Cross, to how Arriane and Gabbe took care of her, to how Molly and Cam taunted her, to the gut-wrenching feeling of seeing a photograph of herself in a former life. Penn’s death and how it devastated her. The surreal battle in the cemetery. Luce left out some of the Daniel details, private moments they’d shared together … but by the time she finished, she thought she’d given Miles a pretty complete picture of what had happened—and hopefully dispelled the myth of her intrigue for at least one person.

At the end, she felt lighter. “Wow. I’ve never actually told this stuff to anyone. Feels really good to say it aloud. Like it’s more real now that I’ve admitted it to someone else.”

“You can keep going if you want to,” he said.

“I know I’m only here for a short time,” she said. “And in a way, I think Shoreline will help me to get used to people—I mean angels like Daniel. And Nephilim like you. But I still can’t help feeling out of place. Like I’m posing as something I’m not.”

Miles had been nodding and agreeing with Luce the whole time she told her story, but now he shook his head. “No way—the fact that you’re mortal makes the whole thing even more impressive.”

Luce glanced around the terrace. For the first time, she noticed a clear line dividing the tables of the Nephilim kids from the rest of the student body. The Nephilim claimed all the tables on the west side, closest to the water. There were fewer of them, no more than twenty, but they took up a lot more tables, sometimes with just one kid at a table that could have seated six, while the rest of the kids had to cram into the remaining east-side tables. Take Shelby, for example, who sat alone, battling the fierce wind over the paper she was trying to read. There was a lot of musical chairs, but not one of the non-Nephilim seemed to consider crossing over to sit with the “gifted” kids.

Luce had met some of the other non-gifted kids yesterday. After lunch, classes were held in the main building, a much less architecturally impressive structure where more traditional subjects were taught. Biology, geometry, European history. Some of those students seemed nice, but Luce felt an unspoken distance—all because she was on the gifted track—that thwarted the possibility of a conversation.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten to be friends with some of those guys.” Miles pointed to a crowded table. “I’d pick Connor or Eddie G. for a game of touch football any day over any of the Nephilim. But seriously, do you think anyone over there could have handled what you did, and lived to tell about it?”

Luce rubbed her neck and felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes. Miss Sophia’s dagger was still fresh in her mind, and she could never think about that night without her heart aching over Penn. Her death had been so senseless. None of it was fair. “I barely lived,” she said softly.

“Yeah,” Miles said, wincing. “That part I heard about. It’s weird: Francesca and Steven are big on teaching us about the present and the future, but not really the past. Something to do with empowering us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ask me anything about the great battle that’s coming, and the role a strapping young Nephilim like myself might play in it. But the early stuff you were talking about? None of the lessons here ever really go into that. Speaking of which”—Miles pointed at the terrace, which was emptying out—“we should go. You want to do this again sometime?”

“Definitely.” And Luce meant it; she liked Miles. He was much easier to talk to than anyone else she’d met so far. He was friendly and had the kind of sense of humor that put Luce instantly at ease. But she was distracted by something he’d said. The battle that was coming. Daniel and Cam’s battle. Or a battle with Miss Sophia’s group of Elders? If even the Nephilim were preparing for it, where did that leave Luce?

Steven and Francesca had a way of dressing in complementary colors that made them look better outfitted for a photo shoot than a lecture. On Luce’s second day at Shoreline, Francesca was wearing three-inch golden gladiator heels and a mod pumpkin-colored A-line dress. It had a loose bow around her neck and matched, almost exactly, the orange tie that Steven wore with his ivory oxford shirt and navy blazer.

They were stunning to look at, and Luce was drawn to them, but not exactly in the couples-crush way Dawn had predicted the day before. Watching her teachers from her desk between Miles and Jasmine, Luce felt drawn to Francesca and Steven for reasons closer to her heart: They reminded her of her relationship with Daniel.

Though she’d never seen them actually touch, when they stood close together—which was almost always—the magnetism between them practically warped the walls. Of course that had something to do with their powers as fallen angels, but it must also have had to do with the unique way they connected. Luce couldn’t help resenting them. They were constant reminders of what she couldn’t have right now.

Most of the students had taken their seats. Dawn and Jasmine were going on to Luce about joining the steering committee so she could help them plan all these amazing social events. Luce had never been a big extracurricular girl. But these girls had been so nice to her, and Jasmine’s face looked so bright when she talked about a yacht trip they were planning later that week that Luce decided to give the committee a chance. She was adding her name to the roster when Steven stepped forward, tossed his blazer on the table behind him, and wordlessly spread his arms out at his sides.

As if summoned, a shard of deep black shadow seemed to part from the shadows of one of the redwoods right outside the window. It peeled itself off the grass, then took substance and whipped into the room through the open window. It was quick, and where it went the day blackened and the room fell into darkness.

Luce gasped out of habit, but she wasn’t the only one. In fact, most of the students inched back nervously in their desks as Steven begin to twirl the shadow. He just reached his hands in and began wrenching faster and faster, seeming to wrestle with something. Soon the shadow was spinning around in front of him so quickly it went blurry, like the spokes of a turning wheel. A thick gust of mildewy wind was emitted from its core, blowing Luce’s hair back from her face.

Steven manipulated the shadow, arms straining, from a messy, amorphous shape into a tight, black sphere, no bigger than a grapefruit.

“Class,” he said, coolly bouncing the levitating ball of blackness a few inches above his fingers, “meet the subject of today’s lesson.”

Francesca stepped forward and transferred the shadow to her hands. In her heels, she was nearly as tall as Steven. And, Luce imagined, she was just as skilled at dealing with the shadows.

“You’ve all seen the Announcers at some point,” she said, walking slowly along the half-moon of student desks so they could each get a better look. “And some of you,” she said, eyeing Luce, “even have some experience working with them. But do you really know what they are? Do you know what they can do?”

Gossips
, Luce thought, remembering what Daniel had told her the night of the battle. She was still too new to Shoreline to feel comfortable calling out the answer, but none of the other students seemed to know. Slowly she raised her hand.

Francesca cocked her head. “Luce.”

“They carry messages,” she said, growing surer as she spoke, thinking back to Daniel’s assurance. “But they’re harmless.”

“Messengers, yes. But harmless?” Francesca glanced at Steven. Her tone betrayed nothing about whether Luce was right or wrong, which made Luce feel embarrassed.

The entire class was surprised when Francesca stepped back alongside Steven, took hold of one side of the shadow’s border while he gripped the other, and gave it a firm tug. “We call this glimpsing,” she said.

The shadow bulged and stretched out like a balloon being blown up. It made a thick glugging sound as its blackness distorted, showing colors more vivid than anything Luce had seen before. Deep chartreuse, glittering gold, marbleized swaths of pink and purple. A whole swirling world of color glowing brighter and more distinct behind a disappearing mesh of shadow. Steven and Francesca were still tugging, stepping backward slowly until the shadow was about the size and shape of a large projector screen. Then they stopped.

They gave no warning, no “What you are about to see,” and after a horrified moment, Luce knew why. There could be no preparation for this.

The tangle of colors separated, settled finally into a canvas of distinct shapes. They were looking at a city. An ancient stone-walled city … on fire. Overcrowded and polluted, consumed by angry flames. People cornered by the flames, their mouths dark emptinesses, raising their arms to the skies. And everywhere a shower of bright sparks and burning bits of fire, a rain of deadly light landing everywhere and igniting everything it touched.